The SEC cracks down on greenwashing
semafor.com
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Most cap-and-trade carbon markets luckily refuse to accept these carbon credits, but they are still commonly used in ESG and claims of carbon neutrality.
Please go see offsets markets are regulated such as California and tell me that your linked rant is still relevant.
I agree - markets that have no support and regulation without teeth let's poor offsets go through (read voluntary markets). I'm talking about regulated / industrial markets.
> I agree - markets that have no support and regulation without teeth let's poor offsets go through (read voluntary markets). I'm talking about regulated / industrial markets.
Deforestation carbon credits from Verra are accepted on California's carbon market and rely on (imo) pretty much fake estimates. In fact, CARB relies heavily [0] on offsets that in my view have done little to prove causality when it would not be difficult to do so.
e: Here is an article in a Nature journal published today indicating that additionality is basically non-existent for California's offset program [1]
[0]: https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/our-work/programs/compliance-offset-p... [1]: https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-023-00984-2
Also you are conflating projects outside of NA and inside of NA.
>>Deforestation carbon credits from Verra are accepted on California's carbon market and rely on (imo) pretty much fake estimates.
imo // "Pretty much fake estimates". ?? Do you have any relevant experience or knowledge in the sector or are you just spouting off?
> [verra link]
I was not aware of the reporting by the Guardian, so can't comment on that specifically but was familiar with the research work of West et al.
I found West's arguments convincing and the arguments in this response less so (worth noting that Verra's CEO resigned in disgrace a few months after this was published). Regardless it would be easy for Verra to conduct an RCT to actually measure additionality. And yet they do not..
> imo // "Pretty much fake estimates". ?? Do you have any relevant experience or knowledge in the sector or are you just spouting off?
I work on causal inference and have read a number of forestry projects descriptions on how they estimate additionality when I was looking into how to offset my own carbon footprint. What I read was clearly insufficient for the causal claims they were making, which led me to West et al's research using synthetic controls.
Regardless, I don't find the appeal to credentialism that convincing when you can't name a single forestry project that has a solid causal estimate for their additionality. And that's before we get into the other CARB-certified projects, like CFC destruction with Verra's baselines that assume 100% violation of the clean air act in the absence of intervention.
> Also you are conflating projects outside of NA and inside of NA.
This is a fair objection to the West study applying to California's market - but it is the same organization certifying the carbon here as the one that has engaged in verging-on-fraudulent additionality estimates. I also linked additional, recent research specific to California's market.
I did scan West's article and found it actually not convincing. As I understand it he argues that because an old forest breakeven point for carbon offsets is 50$ / tonne the thought that offsets at 20 $/tonne isn't actually protecting the forest equates to that forest being already protected and thus there being no additional value for the offsets.
Maybe a different article, the one I am talking about conducted a causal estimate of the carbon averted using synthetic controls, not at all the argument that you are stating [0].
Again, all of this debate would be easy to end with a controlled trial that non-profits like Verra will never do because of what they would reveal.
Do you work in this industry? I am curious if this is a case of 'It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.'
I think most debates could be ended with a scientific experiment - likely never going to happen due to the inconvenience of it.
And no I don't work in the industry but I find that people paint the whole industry with one color - which I find disingenuous. Or they have an opinion based one article in the news which provide a very obtuse perspective.
I mean he isn't Jesus, but yeah if you are here I'd expect you to know who he is.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cory_Doctorow
> In February 2013, Doctorow released Homeland, the sequel to his novel Little Brother.[50] It won the 2014 Prometheus Award (Doctorow's third novel to win this award). > The novel Ready Player One features a mention of Doctorow as being the newly re-elected President of the OASIS User Council (with Wil Wheaton as his vice-president) > The term enshittification was coined by Cory Doctorow in January 2023 in a blog post
I hate the term "thought leader" but he is an known intellectual in the sphere of internet culture, intellectual property, and freedom of information. Now, what are his credentials to the matter at hand... not sure, but yeah, he is kindof a big deal.
That said I'm not a fan of knowledgable(is he knowledgable or is he a persona?) people in one domain stepping into the another domain and taking/using their previously earned clout as a way to push their agenda. I haven't seen great transition to the energy space from tech. It's especially worse as they get into the weeds. I do appreciate outsiders coming in to point out structural / regulatory or bring in new energy.
With that in mind my opinion isn't changed because his original piece didn't have much merit with me.
AFAICT any credit that relies on abatement could easily do a randomized controlled trial to measure how effective they actually are. The fact that they don’t absolutely reeks to high heaven.
so you get fast talkers, clueless do-gooders, shackled and dysfunctional gov'ies, all colliding into what.. and then smart people here can take pot-shots at how bad it is.. OK then, what is your better solution?
Tax carbon[1], mail every man, woman, child, and dog in the country a carbon tax check every three months.
If someone proves that they've actually captured carbon from the atmosphere, and stored it, cut them a slice of that pie, too.
[1] Tax imports based on the same formula.
It's not like purchasing supplies actually needed for your business, where you usually know when something is not delivered or not up to spec.
Still, bogus jet engine parts can find their way into airliners.
https://www.reuters.com/article/epa-biofuels-lawsuit/trading...
And he wasn't caught because the EPA did their jobs (they didn't). He got caught because he bought a ton of sports cars and his neighbors assumed he was a drug dealer or something similar and got local PD to start investigating.
Edit: there was an episode of American Greed about it too - https://m.imdb.com/title/tt6806100/plotsummary/?ref_=tt_ov_p...
As with all systems there are people who will try and work it to their advantage -- though some systems are more resilient than others. CA regulated market is probably the gold standard.
As with all systems it is about creating a market that incentivizes properly and having significant costs to being a bad actor is important.
> The Smoke and Mirrors of ESG Investing with Tariq Fancy
https://capitalisnt.com/episodes/the-smoke-and-mirrors-of-es...
> Environmental, social and governance investing, also know as ESG, has exploded in recent years. It promises to help us solve problems like climate change and inequality all while allowing investors to still turn a profit.
> But BlackRock’s former global chief investment office for sustainable investing, Tariq Fancy, says it isn't what's being advertised. Recently, he penned a blog post claiming that not only are ESGs not making societal problems better, they may actively be making them worse.
1) It’s hard to reliably turn ESG goals into fair (non-gameable) portfolio metrics to incentivize funds
2) LPs still want funds to make returns, so even if they define good metrics, they still want most of the incentive to be based on returns.
3) ESG companies don’t post better returns than those from other asset classes.
It makes more sense for LPs put their money into non-ESG funds and just set aside some amount to achieve ESG goals through a charity with established metrics. They’ll get a tax break to boot.
The additional twist, of course, is that if you pretend you're doing ESG, you might attract investors to your fund that otherwise would have gone to another fund... while actually supporting the ESG goals a lot _less_ than if you just donated money to them as you suggest, while also conveying the idea that profit-oriented investing can motivate corporate behavior toward ESG goals instead of requiring government policy, which is yet another win if you actually don't want to sacrifice any profit for ESG goals and don't want any government regulation, so.... "everyone" wins?
Some notable exceptions: $ETHO - very diversified $FAN - wind $TAN - solar $RNRG - renewable utility companies
Carbon credits, carbon footprint, biofuels, ESG investing, etc., are all nonsense.
Any (primary sector) activity that results in greenhouse gas emissions: pay up. And recurring as long as activity is ongoing.
Activity that stores carbon: receive money. But only after the carbon is stored. Not for paper projects based on future estimates.
Preferably applied at the source (like, where oil is pumped, or land use changes) since that's easiest to audit.
I somewhat agree that taxing fossil fuels directly is the most direct route, though that faces a number of challenges:
- There's no one single global tax authority. Several of the largest fossil fuel extractors (China, India, Indonesia, for coal, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and China, for oil, and Russia, Iran, Qatar, and China for natural gas) would tend to be noncompliant with such impositions.[1]
- Outsourced manufacturing means that a secondary tax on imports of goods or services by carbon emissions would likely be necessary. I'm not sure how this would comport with existing trade treaties.
- Taxes would hit low-income countries much harder than rich ones. This is one of the common sticking points for virtually all emissions- and limits-based interventions, and has been since the 1970s if not earlier.[2]
- Any such taxes would have to be adjusted based on actual atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations. Not merely CO2 but other emissions as well. Effectively the goal is to set a net emissions and warming budget and adjust a tax scheme to achieve that.
- Black markets would undoubtedly emerge, though the scale of such markets would make detection relatively straightforward. The more likely complication is that major actors (the US, China, Russia, India) are nuclear states, and direct interventions would entail their own risks.
- As wealth is power[3], the passing, adoption, and enforcement of such a tax would likely be highly challenging.
I don't have much by way of alternative suggestions, but I do somewhat agree that a direct economic mechanism aimed at the source would be preferable.
________________________________
Notes:
1. Five largest extractors each are, coal: China, India, USA, Indonesia, Australia; oil: USA, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Canada, China; natural gas: USA, Russia, Iran, Qatar, China, sourced from BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2022.
2. Excellent contemporaneous discussion of this in William Ophuls, Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity, 1977, particularly Chapter 7. <https://www.worldcat.org/title/2524932> <https://archive.org/details/ecologypoliticso0000ophu>
3. See: Hobbes and Adam Smith.
Then use diplomacy to get other countries to do the same.
Why not add additional mechanisms such as trade / tariff restrictions?
We tried this China and the WTO. It was not a good strategy.
Agree. But you need a border adjustment tax mechanism.
It will take maybe decades before we start tracking and verifying real sustainability metrics. Until then we'll be swimming in a greewashed goo and hoping for the best.
That measurement was/is gamed, and has become worthless as a metric.
There are currently no viable metrics to use which won’t be gamed.
The statement: ‘Carbon Neutral’ is currently meaningless.
That's overly broad.
If a factory takes in raw materials, outputs products, does so using 100% renewable power (like rooftop solar), and doesn't otherwise release greenhouse gasses in the process, then "carbon neutral factory" would be a reasonable claim.
Of course that does not say anything about greenhouse effects of producing the input materials, use of that factory's products, or effects of the logistics involved.
So, more accurate: GHG emissions is a complex subject. And there's better or weaker ways to do the accounting.
Unless the entire chain is neutral, one node being neutral is meaningless.